▶ Watch Video: FlyDubai captain stabbed mid-flight by “radicalized” co-pilot speaks out
The FlyDubai captain attacked by his co-pilot on a Wednesday flight to Israel says his faith gave him the courage to seize what he believed to be a last chance to save himself and the 173 other people on board the plane.
Flight captain Smit Machchhar told India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi in an emotional video call from his hospital bed in Saudi Arabia on Thursday that, despite multiple stab wounds, he managed to open the cockpit door to let in passengers who subdued the attacking co-pilot, likely saving the 174 people on the Boeing 737.
“I was fighting for my life,” said Machchhar, who is an Indian national. “When I was lying on the floor I could feel the aircraft was going down. I knew exactly that this would be the last push. I told myself that if I didn’t get up, there would be a problem. I managed to open the door, and then everyone else came in.”
Machchhar told Modi how, in his darkest moments, he repeated Hindu religious chants and clung to his faith, believing “God would save us.”
He apologized for breaking down in tears as he told the Indian leader he had never really been “proud of myself, but today I am.”
The first question Modi asked Machchhar was how he was feeling, to which Machchhar, wearing a bandage around his head and with an oxygen tube still in his nose, replied simply: “All good, sir.”
“I am not thinking about the wounds that much,” the captain said. “I look at this as a journey. I am confident of my recovery and return.”
“Get better and healthy, the whole nation is with you,” the Indian leader told him. “I don’t want to bother you much. My best wishes are with you.”
Co-pilot transferred to UAE for questioning
The co-pilot of FlyDubai flight 1073, who has not been identified by authorities, was transferred Thursday from Saudi Arabia to the United Arab Emirates for questioning by Israeli, UAE and Saudi officials, an Israeli official confirmed to CBS News on Friday.
“As time passes, the picture is becoming clearer; the attacker underwent Islamist radicalization. He came to crash the plane with its passengers,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday. “We are investigating whether he was dispatched, and whoever sent him will pay a very heavy price.”
Saudi officials said Wednesday that the co-pilot was hospitalized after the incident and treated for unspecified injuries.
An Omani official confirmed to CBS News that the copilot was born in Oman and currently holds Omani citizenship, but Oman’s government has not publicly confirmed his nationality.
Netanyahu said Thursday that Israel knew he had undergone “Islamist radical indoctrination” based on “personal information” gathered during initial questioning. He offered no further information on the alleged indoctrination Thursday or Friday, but told Fox News on Thursday that the alleged attacker was “suicidal,” and that after he was subdued by other crew members and passengers, he shouted: “Kill me, kill me!”
President Trump on Thursday suggested the co-pilot was linked to Iran, going further than Netanyahu, who had said it was still “too early to say” if Iran could have been involved.
“We’re working on it right now,” Mr. Trump said Thursday at the White House when a reporter asked if the co-pilot had links to Iran. “They’re being very open with us. I would say the answer, based on what I’m hearing, is yes. But we’re working on it right now.”
Asked if the co-pilot could have been working for or with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or radicalized some other way, Mr. Trump replied that he “could’ve been, yeah.”
